‘News’ in the Post-Literate Age
20th February 2024
Sitting here with my office TV tuned to CNN — I watch CNN, so you don’t have to — I’m struck by the arrogance of their assumption that they get to decide what is and is not newsworthy, as if their audience had no other source of information about what’s going on in the world, and no desire to know anything else except what CNN is “reporting.” They have spent most of today going on and on about the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, as well as the war in Ukraine, and they seem to imagine that no one sees through this wall-to-wall coverage in terms of its motive, i.e., to revive the “Russian collusion” hoax against Trump, and to attempt to blame Republicans in Congress for the failure of Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion. It’s about a political narrative, you see, and every other thing in the world — including events much closer to home, of far more relevance to the day-to-day lives of Americans — must be suppressed in order to focus attention on their propaganda message.
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Most members of the vast herd of liberal journalists are disposable — without any inherent value — simply because all of them are “reporting” from the same point of view. So when we hear of the latest round of media layoffs, we shrug in indifference. Nothing of value has been lost.